Archive for August, 2008

A few weeks past my 31st birthday, so much has happened and yet everything has stayed the same. Between the late night drinking at my new favourite pizzeria in Melville to my secret rendezvous with a dreamy brand manager in Melrose I find myself being exactly where I wanted to be a year ago … and despite the many, many obstacles the gains made are unbelievable and yet it all feels unfinished like a lover leaving in the morning without saying your goodbyes. And while I haven’t had a real lover for sometime now, the reminder that time marches on has gotten to me again.

It wasn’t more apparent than when, on my birthday weekend, while walking back to my car after coffee and cupcakes at an authentic patisserie when I looked over to the opposite side of the road. Sitting there was the man who had failed to translate from paper perfect person to lover. I had always imagined bumping into him – of course at the time I was in a Range Rover Vogue – but the surprising thing is that I didn’t really feel anything significant. Perhaps it just didn’t seem important anymore to make him see what he might have missed out on but really when he said goodbye he stopped caring that he had.

But either way as I got into my car my thoughts moved on to things more important like DVD rentals and a disturbingly overstuffed draw of take-out menus all with guaranteed delivery. Since I’ve been no nearer to my mountain bike as the Dali Lama is to Tibet the unease which now constricts blood to my waist whilst wearing one of my fabulous new suits is a reminder that Spring is nearly upon us and time to get my arse back into a saddle – be it equine, mountain bike or otherwise.

But as 6-mnths of strategic work starts to pay off, my mind is elsewhere as the slow trickle of rain has started to fall and the new journey towards my own destiny seems to be well on its way. Carefully selecting clients to consult to have paid off and now I have a pretty decent portfolio of luxury brands and companies to keep me busy.

But wouldn’t it have been so much easier with some kind of guide? After all when so many roads to success all come with detours as well you kind of wish that life had a built-in GPS system. Because with so many choices in life, inevitably there are so many mistakes to be made and as we drive along this road called life, occasionally a boy will find himself a little lost. And when that happens, I guess he just has to let go of the ‘coulda, woulda, shoulda,’ buckle up and just keep on going. As we speed along this endless road towards destination called ‘who we hope to be’ I can’t help but whine … are we there yet?

One step at a time is what my friends tell me, but ever the impatient perfectionist that I am, I prefer sprinting to crawling as you tend to get more done in a day. But when you finish most of your work, however profitable it is, by mid afternoon you mind starts to wonder to other things not satisfied by eating, sleeping or showering. In that instance I either reach for the self-help manual or call a friend with no strings, only benefits and the occasional cup of instant coffee. With the Bradley Cooper-esq guy now unhappily dating for fear of being labelled a fag by his family we have slowly drifted away. Being an only child I never learnt to share my toys – and his fun stick falls into that category – so I just stopped giving in when he opened his arms but kept his heart closed. Perhaps that is why I’ve not gone mountain biking for a while … he always made it so much more fun and there was always his smile at the end of the day.

As the Highveld polo season draws to a close, the fast approaching spring and summer beckons on the horizon. I’m not sure what promise they hold for me, but I do know that after so many years of promises ‘… and then I’ll’ this summer will be different for no other reason than because I am. I’m 31-yrs old … now life starts to get interesting.

JOHANNESBURG. They’re dashing and daring, courageous and caring, faithful and friendly with stories to share, but hundreds of Gummy bears have already been pulped by tunnelling machinery under Johannesburg. According to conservationists, the Gautrain will wipe out Gauteng’s population of the magical bouncing bears “far more quickly than Duke Igthorn could ever have imagined”.

Construction workers on various Gautrain tunnelling sites say they are finding fewer and fewer traces of the magical bears.

“It used to be that we’d see them once every couple of weeks,” said mechanic Josiah Mphundu.

“We’d break through some rock, and we would see these bears, bouncing here and there and everywhere.

“But not any more.”

Crews operating the massive tunnel-boring drill confirmed that they were having to stop work more frequently to scrape the remains of Gummy bears off the specialized drill-head.

“It’s sad, but what are you going to do?” asked borer driver Blakkie Swart.

“When I was a kid you’d hear them, all through forest, singing out in chorus, marching along as their song filled the air.

“But now you sort of hear like a small scream, and then a kind of a wet noise, like someone smashing a watermelon with a hammer, and then you have to stop and scrape all that yellow and blue fur off the drill head.

“It’s kak depressing.”

Conservationist Eric Monkey-Chandler said that efforts to save the remaining bears had been hampered by a lack of knowledge about the secretive animals.

“Magic and mystery are part of their history,” he said.

He said that the bears once inhabited the forests of Mpumalanga before the apartheid homeland system forced them to the cities, where they went underground.

“It destroyed their whole culture. They stopped producing Gummiberry juice in the late 1970s, and they’ve been drinking mostly meths since then.”

He said it had been “heartbreaking” to watch the decline of the species.

“Once, when the legend was growing, they took pride in knowing that they fought for what’s right in whatever they did.

“But it’s hard to fight for what’s right when you’re stoned on meths.”

He said any survivors in Gauteng would probably be transported to the Western Cape, where a handful of Gummy bear communities still survive, working on wine estates as grape pressers.

He added that he and his colleagues would be monitoring the Western Cape’s bears closely, after receiving reports of exploitation and the use of the ‘dop’ system.

“They give the bears a dop of Gummiberry juice, and then put a lid over the grape-pressing tank, so it’s a hell of a noisy, violent situation down there.”

However, he conceded, “tramping on grapes and being paid in the Gummy bear version of crack” was better than being “turned to pink mist” by tunnelling equipment.

Somewhere inside my evolution karmically I seek retribution. Looking for love in physical beauty, desire is the drug of the bourgeoisie.

When asked a few nights ago, as we sat outside on a tepid winter’s evening, what my simplest pleasure in life was, I was immediately drawn to a weekend I had spent many years ago with the Squirrel at a log cabin in Sabie. Perhaps it was the second bottle of Bordeaux shared between us, or the almost-orgasmic succulence of the pheasant prepared just for this dinner but the synapses that had become clogged with cob-webs where fired up and all the sensations returned vividly.

And now I try to intellectualize like a glimmer of good in a bad man’s eyes. I am consumed by the flesh haunting me I know temptation taunts the empty.

Autumn, my favourite season holds such promise and sadness. Where everything takes on a new meaning from the over ripe fruit that sits on the kitchen counter sexually pungent and soft to the touch – to the oxtail simmering like lava in the heirloom soup pot waiting for a cabal of friends or family to devour it completely. The early morning smells challenge the consciousness to find somewhere – or someone to snuggle up against to keep warm as the dawn breaks the mantle of night.

So pour yourself over me. Until there’s nothing left to see, yeah yeah. Because I like the way you move in the dark. I like the tension, the tension and the spark.

It was here, where manipulation and adoration meet at dusk that I learnt that the simple pleasures that you’re unaware even exist, can be unmasked in the burning embers of a fire as darkness sets in all around you. How the finger tips can tease the skin with sensual delights but the hands that they belong to are hard to the touch as it squeezes the life from your beating heart. The fine line between pleasure and pain is only marked by the submission of your soul, as his sex dominates you and teases you and takes control of the senses.

The decadence of giving into desire creates such entropy within. Looking for love in spiritual faces blind to the art of fabrication. I’m like a baby sucking mama’s milk want to drink my fill and then some.

There I lay, my wrists gently bound with a corded knot of a curtain tie-back, my arms stretched over my head. The mind imagining the dying fire a few feet away, but with the slip of silk covering my eyes, the blindness of a memory deceives reality. Exposed in my nakedness, I savoured the touch of my skin against a faux-fur throw casually thrown on the floor. But there I lay, like a rag-doll forgotten by a petulant child, waiting for someone to come past.

Leave me alone I always thought I was better than this but temptation tempts the temptee. Pour yourself over me. Until there’s nothing left to see, yeah yeah.

Expectantly every sound heard feeds the sexual tension building inside. The crackling of the wood in the grate flares against the skin and you breathe deeply in. Unsure if the peaty smell rising up into your nostril is the damp outside, or the slickness of him nearby as he strokes a pulsating muscle that will fill you up tonight with a consuming passion but also someday with an equal emptiness. His body, hotter than the embers in the grate, stands over you. After what seems an eternity of waiting you give in and let him engulf you.

Oh, because I like the way you move in the dark. And I like the tension, the tension and the spark, oh. Because I like the way you move in the dark, oh.

Inch by inch, like a general taking ground in a battle, he annexes my body to his own pleasure. Intuitive experience is his map that guides him closer towards his final conquest. That secret pleasure in tasting the salty sweat as it dripped from his forehead onto my cheek like a seraph’s tear when the demon enters, that sharp, but exquisite pain at first transforms everything and binds me to his soul forever. With full carnal knowledge, I opened myself up willingly and let him cum within.

You know I like the tension, the tension and the spark, oh. This physicality. Shifting me chemically. Such power over me. It’s just desire. I know it’s treachery (shifting me chemically).

Cushioned by his muscled bicep, you head lays heavy in a cacophony of emotions, as your body is held against his in an iron-glad grip. Like time, his hardness has slipped away from your warm, moist cavity and you feel the oily slickness of his seed somewhere near the small of your back. Rhythmically his chest rises up and down as he moves away from your fantasies to dreams within his pawned soul. In moments such as this, with the darkness without you seldom see it within.

I know it’s just skin deep (such power over me). I know I should resist. I’m just too tired. Too tired. There’s just one thing missing. One thing missing here is: Love. But, oh I like the way you move in the dark.

Despite the fact that I have a million things to do the most important at the moment seems to be choosing a new mobile to replace my almost redundant upgrade which is only 11months old. With the new phone I have also elected to get a new number since my current one is 8yrs old and seems to have as much baggage as a woman recently separated from her alcoholic wife-beating husband. And while that comparison isn’t far from the mark – minus the separation and the husband – the abuse and anticipation is the same from years of first dates relationships, and subsequent break-ups.

I have also discovered that I’m not as unique as I would have liked to be. Having caught up my online reading of some of my favourite blog’s, I had one of those ‘Ah-Ha!’ moments and realised that perhaps my whinging and whining isn’t as bad as I sometimes think it is and that there are guys out there with perhaps as much bad luck in choosing men or for having that ever hopeful romantic outlook that seems to be squarely squashed when someone with a better definition or slutty disposition comes along. Despite there is an ocean between us, reading his words this morning written in moments of honesty were almost my own.

And since the feeling of living on borrowed time still hasn’t dissipated, I am getting used to living with it in kind of the same way that you get used to the blubber where love handles once were. Either situation hasn’t been helped much since my aunt was down from Cape Town et family cooking up a storm for breakfast, lunch and dinner with snacks and alcoholic refreshments every 2hrs to boot. But with the welcome distraction, the extra few Kg’s which was part and parcel I must have picked up wreaks havoc with my plans of snagging that adorable someone, somewhere at a time still to be determined.

But for the most part my time is now filled up with blah, blah, blah and I’m looking forward to going to sleep. I guess it’s good to be me right now.